Sauce spoon sighting!

It came into view during the dessert course of a tasting menu. Suddenly, there it was, clear as day, between the dessert plate and the knife: a sauce spoon.

Made of sterling silver, it was flat -- not spoonlike at all, really, in the sense that it didn’t have a bowl-like depression -- with a tiny notch in the side.

Once upon a time, you could find sauce spoons, predictably, at the finest restaurants. Usually part of the place setting with main courses, they were handy items: One placed the flat part of the implement flush against the plate and swept it across, to pick up sauce too delicious not to eat. Here, at Kikuchi, a modest Japanese-French fusion bistro in West Hollywood, it came with the dessert course. Curiously, the cocktail of fresh fruit, cubes of white wine gelee and a Grand Marnier sauce was served in a deep bowl, so it wasn’t obvious how one would use the sauce spoon.

“It’s for cutting the gelatin and eating the sauce,” chef-owner Koichiro Kikuchi explained later.

Although they’re commonplace in just about every serious French restaurant in New York and, bien sur, in Paris, here in L.A. they’re a rarity. But they seem to be making something of a comeback, if indeed they ever were a fixture here in the casual dining capital of the world.

Ludovic Lefebvre, chef at Bastide in West Hollywood, says that years ago when he headed up the kitchen at L’Orangerie, there were no sauce spoons. “When I came here [to Bastide, last year], I said, ‘Oh, we have the sauce spoon, good,’ ” he says. At Bastide it appears primarily when a fish course is served. It’s meant not only to get every last drop of sauce, but also to eat the fish. “If you use a fork,” says Lefebvre, “it can fall apart.” Bastide also offers it with foie gras dishes.

At Providence in L.A., chef-owner Michael Cimarusti says sauce spoons are great for eating purees. “It’s the best way to get them off the plate,” he says. “They’re perfect and indispensable.” Diners at Providence who order, say, Japanese ayu (sweet fish) with a puree of sugar crisp carrot and pumpkin seed vinaigrette will find it plateside.

So what’s the notch for?

“I have no idea,” says Lefebvre.

“I was always told it was for taking the bones out of the fish, but I might be mistaken,” says Cimarusti.

Gregory Casteles, manager at Bastide, offers competing theories: “Some people say it makes it easier to take the sauce. That’s the one I believe makes more sense. The other one is to get the bone out of the fish.”

The spoon can also be found scooping up sauces at Patina, the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington and, yes, at L’Orangerie. “We use it for every fish who has a sauce,” says owner Gerard Ferry. This, he adds , has been going on for something like a decade.

And at Spago, where some of the most delicious sauces in town can be found? “Spago does not use sauce spoons,” says assistant general manager Nick Fielding. “They are a bit antiquated and out of date.”

So much for progress.

-- Leslie Brenner and Cindy Dorn

Small bites

* David and Michelle Myers, the chefs behind Sona and Boule, are teaming up with Kazunori Nozawa of Studio City’s Sushi Nozawa to open a modern Japanese restaurant in the style of Tokyo kappo (bar food) spots. The yet-to-be-named West Hollywood eatery is slated for an early 2006 opening.

* Restaurant 162’, named for its location 162 feet above sea level, opened last week at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel. The restaurant, which replaces the formal Dining Room, serves California cuisine, with an emphasis on seafood.

Restaurant 162’, 1 Ritz Carlton Drive, Dana Point, (949) 240-2000.

-- Leslee Komaiko